Laps Are the New Desks

Acer TravelMate C200$1,300www.us.acer.com

With their swiveling screens that fold back on themselves, convertible tablet PCs already look a bit odd. But Acer's TravelMate C200, with its sliding rail mechanism, is positively goofy-looking. Nevertheless, it's a clever idea in practice -- allowing the user to jump between tablet and laptop modes in one quick motion.

A funny thing happened in May 2003; sales of laptop computers outpaced desktop computers for the first time, accounting for 54 percent of computer sales that month, according to an Associated Press article published in USA Today that July.

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An even funnier thing happened in May of 2005: Laptop computers outsold desktop computers for the first time … again. That was according to an Associated Press story that ran in USA Today last June with almost the same headline.

Whenever it first happened, it seems clear that laptop computers are now the American public’s preferred tool for data crunching, word processing, internet surfing, music/photo storing and organizing, and movie editing. We use the portable machines for everything from watching movies to preparing business presentations to doing math homework.

This is due to three major trends: First, laptops have become more advanced, and the technology they contain finally rivals that offered by desktop PCs. Second, laptops have become dramatically cheaper over the past few years. Companies such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard are currently offering models for around $500, with rebates. But the third and probably most important reason laptops have been selling so well is the remarkable spread of wireless technology. Airports, hotels, coffee shops, college campuses, convention centers and almost anywhere business takes place or people simply have to stop and think, Wi-Fi is there.

And other high-speed services are spreading. Cellular service providers now sell broadband wireless technologies such as Evolution-Data Optimized, or EV-DO — a wireless radio broadband data standard adapted for code division multiple access, or CDMA, cell-phone providers — and Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution, or EDGE, which promises higher data-transfer speeds over its networks. These allow anyone to convert a laptop into an always-connected-almost-anywhere device with an expansion card/antenna. And even more powerful wireless technologies are coming.

As always, with increased sales come increased product differentiation and choice. There have traditionally been three segments of notebook PCs (that’s what the industry insists upon calling laptops): ultra-portables, desktop replacements and the “thin and light” models that are not as thin and light as the ultra-portables, but are not as heavy and powerful as the desktop replacement computers. That list has now expanded to include gaming laptops, multimedia laptops, tablet PCs (which may or may not be considered laptops), ruggedized laptops (which have existed for years as a specialty product for those in the military and on construction jobs, but are now being marketed to the merely clumsy) and countless other derivations.

But these portable-computer variants are not all marketing hooey; they are a reflection of the evolving tastes and needs of the buying public. As laptops move into new territory, many of them are sporting fancy wide screens, dual-core chips, dual-layer DVD burners and faster, bigger hard drives to hold everything from large music libraries to high-definition videos.

It’s more than enough to perpetuate our love for laptops — even if there’s some debate about when the relationship first blossomed.